Purging
by MoonOfPluto
Summary: "Purging: to rid somebody of an unwanted emotion, memory or condition." Purging is what Prim does now. It is her duty to the other spirits that she meets in the afterlife. Some spirits are harder to purge than others though. Even so, Prim always believes that redemption is possible. One-shot, written for Achieving Elysium's 'The Primrose Chronicles' competition.


Purging:

"Purging: to rid someone of an unwanted feeling, memory or condition." -Search result of define: purging.

Primrose Everdeen had never believed in heaven. She had never believed in any higher power either. It wasn't that she was an active unbeliever, she simply didn't have time to think of it. There had always been a more pressing task that had required her attention. First it was gathering herbs with Katniss. As she got older she had helped her mother treat patients. She had saved lives back then, she knew. And much later being a doctor in the rebellion.

Prim had plenty of time to think about the meaning of life now. It was slightly ironic, as she was dead. She never would be coming back and it was doubtful that she would see any of her loved ones again. That had hurt, when she had first entered this state. The given knowledge that Katniss would be sent to another place. To the realm of heroes, to be with others like her. She didn't begrudge Katniss this though. Katniss would hate it down here. Katniss had a long time to go until then anyway.

Prim knew that she would never leave this place. She didn't want to anyway. It was where she belonged, and besides, she had a duty here. A duty to the other people? Spirits? Souls? Prim didn't really know what to call them. Incarnations, she decided was the most fitting. They still had a physical form, in a sense. You could still see them, still feel them. They were still painfully human.

The only other thing that Prim knew about this place was its name: purgatory.

That was her job. To purge the incarnations before they reached their next level. Prim didn't know what the next level was. Her inner optimist wanted to believe that it was heaven, or at least some place nicer than here. The realistic side of her suggested that it would vary from individual to individual. She knew that Katniss would go to a realm of heroes. Prim just hoped that she might pass through purgatory before. Her more pessimistic side suggested that once they had been healed, the people were just free to die. Prim didn't want to believe that though. It just seemed like a waste.

She liked her job though. It seemed to embody her personality. There was the calm that this place brought. Then the sense of duty that kept her going, kept her from losing purpose and becoming bored. And their was the nurturing, healing side of what she did and the feeling that her work here was helping people. It was like being a healer again and she thought that it was why she had been chosen to be here. Whatever the reason, she was glad that she was chosen for this.

It was difficult to describe her form at the moment. It was a physical form. She could still feel her body, though no pain. She could still see and hear and touch. There was another sense added to the mix though, one that she didn't have a name for. She just called it sensing. It was where she could feel the location of a spirit, and read their surface thoughts. She would know why they were here and have an intuitive knowledge of what they needed.

And Prim could sense someone now. She traveled across to the locus of the feeling. She could sense that this person needed a lot of help, needed a lot of time to achieve the inner peace that she aimed for. She wondered if it was another person who died in the rebellion. There had been plenty of them lately and a lot of them took a few weeks to appear up here. Most of them had this sort of aura of pain and suffering as well. This one seemed particularly scarred though.

Prim wondered how she automatically had the peace that she was helping others with. She was a large part of the rebellion after all, hell, her sister was the symbol of the rebellion. Maybe she had been through a healing process that she didn't remember before coming to purgatory. The idea just didn't stick with her though. She could remember waking up here and she didn't feel any different to in life, minus the sensing thing.

The first thing that she had noticed was how very grey purgatory was. And how large. There seemed to be clear space spread out everywhere as far as she could tell, even though you couldn't see it at first. There was also no temperature here and no air either. The textures were limited to the ground, which felt soft and silky, and the incarnations, which felt just like humans. It was like the senses of smell and taste had been removed (and nobody arrived in purgatory with any food).

Prim reached the incarnation. He turned to her and they looked each other up and down. Prim felt an icy tingle of fear in her throat as she recognised who this was. She was torn between the instinct to run and hide (although there was no where that she could hide in purgatory) and reach out and help.

"Miss Everdeen," the incarnation said. His tone was tired and showed a hint of regret.

"President Snow," Prim replied warily. "You killed me," she stated.

"You can call me Coriolanus. There's no need for formality here. I'm not president anymore, in any case. And it wasn't me that killed you."

"You can call me Prim. And there's no need for manipulation here. You won't gain anything by convincing me to come to your side. So cut the lies."

"I'm not manipulating you," Snow says. "If I was, you wouldn't know. No, all I'm doing is telling the truth. I dislike lying without a cause. And I'm probably going to hell anyway, there's no use in trying to drag you down with me."

"To hurt Katniss," Prim replied. "You hate her enough to do that. You've shown that you aren't above using children in your plans. And hell might not even exist. I only know for sure that this place exists, so you can stop trying."

"Really," Snow said. "And I'm not the type for revenge. You might find that hard to believe, but it's true. Revenge is an emotional reaction. Revenge won't bring me back to life. Revenge won't help in any way, therefore I will not engage in revenge. It is as simple as that."

"So why are you lying? I know that the rebels wouldn't bomb me, so it must have been your side and indirectly you. And do you have emotion at all? Everybody has emotion, even you must feel something." Prim wondered if that was just naive optimism, but she couldn't imagine what it would be like not to feel.

"I don't feel much," Snow responded. "Perhaps slight feelings of fear or happiness or anger rarely, but not often. Do you see that as a bad thing? It means that I can make the sensible decisions, not the emotional ones. Otherwise I would be trying to corrupt or harm you now, instead of talking like civil human beings. I also don't hate Katniss. I admire her, in fact. She was intelligent. And do you know what she did in the last moments before I died?"

"She probably aimed the arrow at your heart and let it fly," Prim said. She knows Katniss. Katniss was too strong to let Snow mess with her head and Katniss had been given the honour of killing Snow. She wished that she could see Katniss one las time. She wished that Katniss was here to protect her right now. Physically, Snow couldn't do anything to her, but mentally? That was another matter.

"She aimed at Coin at the last moment. I died laughing. And as untruthful as this sounds, it was the rebels. Think about it. Who uses the type of bomb that kills in two waves. Your friends. I believe it was your sister's best friend that designed the bomb. Gale Hawthorne, yes?" He didn't wait for her answer before ploughing on. "And who were the first targets? Capitol children. Why would I bomb my own citizens?"

Prim mulled it over for a second. Snow's words made sense, but she still didn't want to believe that she had been killed by her own side, by Gale's weapon. She liked Gale. She had saved many lives in the rebellion, they couldn't have betrayed her. They couldn't have. It was impossible. But at the same time she knew the words were true. Snow was right about this, but it didn't make him the good guy, she reminded herself. He was still evil, even if he wasn't the one who killed her.

"Why did Katniss kill President Coin?" Prim asked softly, remembering to keep her temper. Her job was to help this man after all. That didn't mean that she couldn't get a bit of information on the way though. Judging by what she could sense about Snow and the deeds that she knew he had done, she would be spending a lot of time with him. Prim just wondered why she was the one for this task though.

She hadn't met any other healers in purgatory, but there must be some others. After all, it was a huge place and so many people passed through here. It couldn't just be managed by her alone. Perhaps it was chance that brought them together, but Prim thought that it was more than that. It had to be more than that, there had to a be a reason that she was given the man who had put her through so much in life, even if he wasn't the one who killed her. Perhaps it was thought that she was the best one to get through to him.

"Katniss realised what President Coin had done," Snow replied. "I convinced her when she saw me once. She knows that Coin killed you, not me. She knows that Coin was even more ruthless than I was. Coin tried to kill Katniss so that she would have more power. Telling the truth to Katniss was my last good deed for Panem. So they could avoid another dictator. I just wanted Panem to flourish."

"You wanted power," Prim countered. "Up until the time when you knew that you would die. Then you decided that it wouldn't harm you to help Katniss. It was the logical decision." Snow nodded. "You can't tell me that you cared much about people before that. You admitted it yourself. Another dictator. You were a dictator."

"Yes. Yes I was," Snow admitted. "But by convincing Katniss, I also managed to save Panem from another few decades of dictatorship. Did you know that Coin wanted to stage another Hunger Games, this time with Capitol children? Very hypocritical of her. At least my Hunger Games were to stop war, not for revenge."

"That's awful," Prim said in horror. "And you have a granddaughter. She would have definitely been reaped. How did she ever become the leader of the rebellion and President of Thirteen? Who would vote for someone like that?"

Snow shrugged. "Leader of the rebellion came from being President of Thirteen. I have doubts that she became President of Thirteen by a vote. I suspect that it was more similar to my rise to power. I poisoned the other candidates. I drank the poison myself as well, to avoid suspicion. I had the antidote as well though. It still left bloody sores on the inside of my mouth though."

"You really craved power," Prim whispers, more to herself than to anybody else. She had almost forgotten, in their civil conversation, that this man was the President of Panem, killer of many, her sister's arch enemy. Just because he didn't believe in revenge didn't make him a good person, not by any stretch. He deserved hell more than anyone she had treated here, though if he was here it probably meant that he wasn't going to hell. Still, Prim believed in redemption for everyone. Even Snow. If he was here it meant that there was a possibility of redemption.

"That's true. I'm not trying to make myself out as a good person here," Snow said. "Some of my intentions were for the good of Panem. Some were from the selfish desire of power. I liked power, therefore I took it. I don't see selfishness as a bad thing. If everybody was selfish and had to fend for themselves, they would."

"A society of psychopaths would never function," Prim responded. "It would be survival of the fittest. People would be murdering each other for power all the time for personal gain. Yes, the strong and smart would survive, they would rise to power quickly. But what about the others? Nice people who don't have it in them to murder? Weak people? Sick people? Disabled people? They would all be killed in the struggle for power."

"And why would that be wrong?" Snow challenges her. "That's the way it works in nature. Big animals kill smaller animals. Those who can't hunt starve. Eventually the species becomes stronger for it. The superior genes are passed on and over many years, the species evolves."

"It would be wrong because of all the opportunities that would be missed. People can become stronger. Nice people bring a lot of happiness. And also because of the feelings of those left behind. It isn't a good thing to feel sadness. You've felt sad before haven't you? It's horrible to inflict pain like that on someone else."

There were a few moments of silence as they each took in what the other said. Prim hoped that she had gotten through to President Snow. This was much different to all of her other cases, but she could sense that what Snow needed was to be convinced in rational debate, rather than to appeal to his emotions. President Snow was very interesting to talk to, Prim considered. Most of the other people she talked to down here needed to be convinced and comforted about their deaths for a few hours. Snow had accepted it straight out.

"That makes sense," Snow said slowly. "But if the scale tips too far in that direction there will be no reward for being intelligent or skilled because people can get the same without. Surely there should be benefits to being better than everyone else? Not just having to work more to support those weaker than you."

"I guess that is true," Prim responded. "But there should be a minimum level that people can have no matter how stupid or weak. People should always be given enough food and water. They should always be educated and given opportunities. You didn't grow up in District 12. If Katniss hadn't hunted in the woods for us, we would have starved."

"People were given the opportunity to better themselves," Snow said. "I made sure when I came to power that every District would have enough schools to support all of the children and enough work that there would be no unemployment. But you are right. It is unfair that some people are born into poverty. There is no way to avoid that though."

"You could have allowed people to move between the Districts," Prim suggested. "There was a lot more potential to earn money in District One or Two than there was in Twelve. And their work is much safer. There were many mining accidents in Twelve. My father died in one, when I was seven."

"I'm sorry." There is a few minutes lapse in their conversation. "I'm talking as if we aren't both dead ourselves," Snow said. "Have you ever seen him again? Is he in this place? Where is this place anyway? It doesn't seem to be heaven or hell, but if everyone who died went here there probably wouldn't be so much empty space."

"I call it purgatory," Prim replied to his questions. "I don't think everybody goes down here, no. To my knowledge, it's just a place to become at peace with the events of life. It's my duty here. I help people to make peace with themselves. A lot of people pass through here, but they normally pass on pretty quickly. I don't know where they go."

"Oh. Perhaps they just die," Snow suggested. Prim had suspected that Snow was the more pessimistic type. He had no reason to assume otherwise, so he assumed the worst. Prim wondered if it was natural with him or if it was because of the events of his life. Maybe it was a bit of both.

"Perhaps they do. I prefer to think that they go to heaven, or at least a place that suits them. You accepted your death very quickly by the way. Most of the first conversations that I have with people down here are convincing them that they are dead and that's OK," Prim said. "It's quite refreshing to have someone just accept it."

Snow laughed. It was a dry, harsh laugh. The sort that she would have expected from him. Prim wondered if he still had the sores on the inside of his mouth from the poison. Perhaps it was age as well. Snow looked around eighty, but it was hard to tell his age as Prim knew that there were a lot of surgeries in the Capitol to make people look younger. It seemed like a waste of surgery to her, feeding people's vanity instead of treating those who needed it.

"I accepted my death long before I came up here," Snow told her. "I was chained up in the rose garden of my mansion while they waited for Katniss to recover enough after your death to shoot me. That was when she met me. She was quite a lot like you you know. She was suspicious of me at first, but then we could talk. The difference is that you actually seem to care, seem to want to redeem me. Katniss just wanted information."

"How badly was Katniss hit by my death?" Prim asked quietly. She hoped that Katniss hadn't grieved too badly, but she knew the extent of Katniss's love to her. It went beyond the relationship between most sisters. Katniss had volunteered for her, knowing full well that she might die. She knew that Katniss would probably need a lot of time to move on. "What's happening to her now? Tell me!" she demanded.

"She spent months alone in my mansion, having food brought into her. It hit her hard. I doubt she'll ever get over it, but she was still sane last time I saw her. Sane enough to listen to reason and make the decision to shoot the arrow at President Coin. She might not be alive anymore though. There were riots after she shot Coin."

"She's alive. I would know if she wasn't," Prim insisted. "I can sense that she's still alive. She has a lot of time left until she dies. I know. It's hard to explain, I just do." Snow shrugged and Prim wondered if he didn't believe her. Being the type of person he was she wouldn't be surprised.

"Can you sense everybody like that?" Snow asked. "Can you sense how long my granddaughter has left?" Prim could hear the concern for Snow's granddaughter in his voice. He hadn't struck her as a kind grandpa, but appearances could be deceptive. Even though he didn't care for many people, Prim could tell that there was a soft spot in his heart for her.

"I'm sorry, I can't. It's only Katniss that I can sense and that's because I was so close to her in life. You were close to her, weren't you?" Prim asked, even though she knew the answer. It would help her to understand Snow better if she could get him to talk about it though. "You might be able to sense her though," she suggested to cheer Snow up.

"I was close to her," Snow replied, looking down sadly. "And I can't sense her. Believe me, I've tried. I was concerned that someone else might have taken charge and done the Capitol children Hunger Games. My granddaughter was very innocent. She didn't believe in the Games. She often suggested to me that I should have made the Third Quarter Quell twist that only volunteers could be chosen. It didn't fit with the plan though."

"What was her name?" Prim asked curiously. This could be the key to Snow's redemption, the one part of him that was pure and innocent. His feelings towards his granddaughter. There was no disappointment in her there, no desire to make her change. No, he loved her, it was as simple as that.

"She was called Khione. I suggested that name to her mother. Khione was an ancient goddess, she was the goddess of snow. I thought the name was fitting because of how I felt about her. Her mother agreed, so she was named Khione. You might think that it's an odd name, but in the Capitol there are much more unusual names."

"Like Coriolanus," Prim said. "But I guess my name would be considered odd in the Capitol, wouldn't it? I've never seen another Primrose before anywhere other than in District 12."

"Precisely. In the Capitol people like the more unusual names. Naming people after flowers isn't normal there. Though there was an influx of mothers calling their children Katniss and Peeta after they won the seventy fourth. Coriolanus isn't too abnormal there, you know."

"I can't believe that I'm sitting discussing District and Capitol names with President Snow," Prim said, laughing. "I wonder what Katniss would say if she could see this! She would probably claim that you manipulated me and try to kill you I guess," Prim said, sobering up for a moment. "She was very protective of me like that. Did you have any siblings?"

"No, I was an only child. There was nobody so protective of me like that. But I didn't need or want somebody looking out for me all the time. It would irritate me. Though I guess you see that as actions done for love, therefore making them OK, yes? You have a bias towards people who feel strongly."

"I suppose I do," Prim replied. "Even though I don't like you, I'm glad that we could talk. I can sense that you are now a lot closer to inner peace than you were before. And I just want to help people, no matter what they've done. I'm not one for revenge either. It won't make me feel better to hurt someone else."

"Thank you for understanding," Coriolanus said. "Not many people would. There are some merits to caring and emotion, I suppose, though it just isn't natural to me. I can see why you were chosen for this job. You're a natural at it. That's one of the main things that differentiates you and Katniss: you care for all living things. It's not such a bad quality."

Prim smiled slowly as she watched Coriolanus's figure fade. He had reached the balance. He wouldn't be going to hell, she knew. That was why he came to purgatory for redemption. After all, there was no purpose in punishing someone just for revenge. Snow's redemption was much faster than she thought it would be. She had done her duty well.

Now it was time to move on though. There were a lot more spirits in need of her help.

xXx-X-xXx

Thanks for reading! This story was written for AchievingElysium's 'The Primrose Chronicles' competition. I hope you enjoyed my portrayal of what Prim's afterlife would be like. I thought that her caring for everybody was what defined Prim in life, so I tried to carry it through here. President Snow, I thought wouldn't be all evil. I could see him trying to do what he thought was right as well as gaining and keeping power. I also imagined that he would have a pretty big soft spot for his granddaughter. He reminds me of Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad in that he does what has to be done, but also has his softer side. Mike was part of the basis for this Snow. Anyway, please leave me some feedback in a review so I can see what you thought.

-MoonOfPluto


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